If this gets through, LGF’s going to have to change their standard punchline in some of the posts.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to prohibit any aid to Saudi Arabia as lawmakers accused the close ally of religious intolerance and bankrolling terrorist organizations.
The prohibition, reflecting persistent tensions with the kingdom after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, was attached to a foreign aid funding bill for next year that has not yet been debated by the Senate.
It also faces a veto threat from the White House because of an unrelated provision.
This is likely going to be popular, but I don’t know enough about where the money goes and why to make a good case about it either way. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Somewhere I feel it’s useful to point out “one year of aid is a gift, three is an entitlement”, but not sure where.
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June 23rd, 2007 at 7:05 am
This is pure theater, right? I see we’ve done this once or twice before, in 2004 Congress took the incredibly bold step of withholding $25,000 of aid money to the Saudis because they weren’t down with W on the whole GWOT deal. Even Dr. Evil grokked that as a low ball.
Congress cheers itself doing the right thing by not putting in batteries in the new Wal Mart razor it bought Prince Abdullah for Father’s Day because the Daddy Provider of the Life Juice wouldn’t play catch with us last Saturday.
And in a mirror of the Legislative Oedipal Complex, the President will, as he did in 2004, put his foot down and render the pitiful symbol entirely moot by simply vetoing the bleat, as a father would by closing the door on a child in full bloom of a temper tantrum.
What does this all mean, this Javanese Shadow Theater? Clearly, Saudi Arabia’s interests are not entirely in concert with the United States and vice versa, which is a huge problem because we kinda got this covenant marriage deal with each other — our thoroughly intertwined networks of oil futures, investments, currency guarantees, security arrangements, and families make the whole Keiretsu thing look rather junior.
We can’t just break up and we can’t ignore each other. We can’t just chastise and threaten Iran for its proxy sponsorship of Shia insurgency and terrorism in Iraq and simultaneously remain silent on Saudi Arabia’s proxy sponsorship of Sunni insurgents and terrorists just because we’re married. Not if peace is ever to come to Iraq.
We can’t pretend to tweak them as Congress does and we can’t just not say something publicly about Saudi’s current role in Iraq and throughout the Middle East as the President does. We must demand that the House of Saud get its, uh, “house” in order. But that entails that we first must get our house in order to be in a position to morally, economically, diplomatically, and politically leverage our will towards the Saudis. The hurdles are tremendous — decadence, addiction to power, fear, monomania — qualities with no boundaries. But either the US and Saudi Arabia will overcome them, and win the shadow war, or peace will not only not frequent Iraq, but remain absent most of the Middle East.
In the meantime, we have the Shadow Play to momentarily distract us.
And that’s probably not good. As a friend of mine recently prophesied:
June 23rd, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I think you may be missing something here. The proposed amendment is of course a piece of theater, but the fact of its existence signals a willingness of that side to start taking a little more action than previously. This willingness may allow some more effective negotiation and is an essential part of the “getting our house in order” you mention, as long as it’s rational and not overboard. That’s why I highlighted it; it’s not completely useless a gesture. (BTW I recommend Crossroads Arabia on the sidebar; he’s a retired State guy who has forgotten more than I could know there.)
You speak of covenant marriages. One that is also worth considering is Saudi Arabia compared to, say, China; the more directly complicating relationship, though, is between the political tyranny of royal Sauds versus the religious tyranny of Wahabi imams, bound together since the first king established power with religious help. That makes the knot rather more Gordian.
For us, however, the special relationship (no capital letters) that started in (IIRC) 1948 is worth looking at in terms of what that does to global energy. Saudi Arabia’s oil spigot acts as a central bank’s printing press does, and thus directly affects energy prices. If another country came on line with more assets able to control its output in a similar way, the influence of the country would be lessened, and…hey, is that an explosion at a pipeline in southern Iraq?
Or is that sound Aramco coming to build one?
Hey, why can’t we drill in ANWR or off the Gulf coast?
June 23rd, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Everything makes sense to me except the last question — why we can’t drill in ANWR or Gulf Coast?.
Tell you what, give me 38 mpg by 2020, gas guzzler taxes now, and some other conservation measures and I’ll give you ANWR and Jeb’s back yard with stiff environmental regulation.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Why? On the fringes there are folks with interests in keeping the US from being more energy independent or not buying from them. Not that it gets as much play as the environmental activism, but it’s there.
I could give you 60 MPG by the same magic CAFE’s trying to use but it wouldn’t matter if China continues on its trendlines, along with India and everywhere else…